A Scandal to Remember (10 page)

If only she could breathe properly in his presence. He wasn’t even touching her and the air felt hot and tight in her chest. She put her hand to the high bodice of her dress to ease the pull of the neckline against her throat. “Good morning, Lieutenant. Have you no cabin yet, sir, within which to wash and dress yourself?”

“No,” he answered simply, “I do not.” To illustrate his point, he pulled his black silk stock away from his neck with an audible snap, before favoring her with that challenging, cynical half-smile that twitched up one side of his mouth. “Do I shock you, Miss Burke?”

She wanted to meet the challenge in those dark green eyes, and give him as good as she got. But she could barely breathe. “You are trying to.”

Her honesty—and apparent humor—made the smile widen across his lips. “Am I succeeding?”

“A little.” Which was a complete lie. Of course he was succeeding. And he knew it.

He advanced on her then, sauntering slowly across the few feet that separated them while he shucked off his waistcoat and tossed it over the back of his chair with his coat.

Jane’s shoulders smacked into the door frame at her back, halting any further retreat.

“Then I must try harder.” And with that, he used his superior height to lean his hands onto the ceiling beams above Jane’s head.

“Lieutenant Dance.” Jane hated that she sounded all breathless discomposure even to her own ears. “You needn’t do so on my account.” The neck of his shirt lay open, and a swath of golden skin was right in front of her eyes. And he smelled of soap and lime and wind.

“But I do, Miss Burke.” He was so close, she dared not look up to see him speak, but his voice insinuated itself into her bones, echoing uncomfortably through her body. “Because I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

“Do I?” Her voice was no more than a whisper, and she could hear her breath fragment into little gulping pants.

Oh, God. Not now. Not in front of this pitiless, cynical man and his insolent, challenging eyes.

“Yes.” He leaned down lower, close to her ear, as if he had a confidence he wished to impart. “My shaving mirror.”

And then he reached over her head, and plucked it off the wall. And with a smile that told her he knew exactly what he was doing to her, and was pleased, he ambled back to the wardroom table, and began to soap his face.

“Oh, yes.” Jane was determined to overcome this dreadful susceptibility. She would not give in to it—she would not. She would not let him toy with her so. “I thought it must be yours. So very high up.”

“Very scientific observation.” Dance spoke around the lather he was applying to his face and neck in preparation for shaving. “It reminds me to make my own—still breathing, are you, Miss Burke?”

“Barely.” Jane decided honesty was her only weapon at hand. But she hated how breathless and girlish she sounded. Not at all like her usual organized, in-control self. She swallowed down her discomposure and made her tone as tart as she could. “Is there some particular reason you’ve chosen to toy with me this morning, Lieutenant? Is there some demon plaguing you that you need to exorcize by plaguing me? Or was there something of greater substance than your naked body that you wished to discuss?”

The barb found its mark. He winced up one side of his face to acknowledge the hit. But he was not done vexing her. Not by a very long shot. “I’m not naked yet, Miss Burke. Not nearly.” He raised his chin and began to scrape the razor along the long line of his jaw, drawing her gaze to the sinuous musculature of his arms and shoulders.

Oh good Lord, but he was as handsome and fine a specimen as she had ever laid eyes upon. Tall and strong and fit, as if he were made solely for the purpose of hard living alongside the lofty masts and spars. A man in his element.

Unlike her. Who was nothing but determination and deceit.

But she was more than that—she had a mind and a heart of her own. And she would use them.

“Excellent.” She kept her tone as dry as her throat. Honesty could be as brutal as innuendo, and two could play at his game. “If you would like to take your shirt off and continue to disrobe, I’m sure I would benefit from the instruction. I have never seen a naked man, and you seem to be rather an intriguing specimen.”

Oh, that took him entirely off guard—enough to make him nick his neck with the razor. But he held his composure just as willfully as she, though he did turn to look at her, as if to reassure himself that she was still the same small, harmless female he had thought her not two moments ago. “You’ve got backbone, Miss Burke, I’ll grant you that.”

Did he truly mean to be admiring, or was he admiring her in the same facetious way she was ogling him? And she was ogling him, wasn’t she? Turnabout
was
fair play.

Jane reached into her cabin and found her magnifying lens on the chair where she had left it, and raised it in front of her, as if it might aid in her examination of him as a scientific specimen. “So do you have a spine, I see. Most instructive. If you would stay there, just like that—posed in such an evocative attitude—I believe I will get my drawing materials out to capture your physique accurately for the benefit of Mr. Denman and the Royal College of Surgeons. I imagine it’s not often that they get a specimen of your so particularly imposing physique to study.”

Everything within him changed. Every hint of playful challenge disappeared from his face, as if shuttered down. Closing her out. The air in the close room seemed to reverberate with the force of a door slamming shut.

He turned away from her, and quickly shucked the shirt over his head, using the linen to wipe the remains of soap from his face, before he immediately donned a clean shirt, and set about turning himself back into a naval officer. “My apologies, Miss Burke.”

What had she said this time? But it didn’t matter. She was suddenly ashamed for trying to discompose him as much as he had tried to discompose her. “Lieutenant Dance I—”

He looked at her over his shoulder, his glance still guarded and cool. And she meant to apologize to him as well, to take her share in the blame for the strange changed atmosphere between them. Only there was a patch of soap on the far corner of his jaw, just below his ear. “I’m sorry, but you missed a spot.”

He scrubbed a hand along the hard length of his chin, but the soap remained.

“No. There.” Jane could not seem to stop herself from pointing out the exact spot. From moving close enough to touch him as if she might rub the offending bit of soap away with the backs of her fingers.

Lieutenant Dance flinched away, as if she were about to nick him with the razor.

His reaction lit a bonfire of mortification in her chest. “I’m sorry,” she stammered, and that abominable feeling of choking heat seared up her throat. “I thought you would want to know.”

“I suppose I do want to know.” His voice was so low, she had to strain upward to hear him. But his eyes. His bright green eyes seemed to burn as hotly as her chest. They bored into her, burning away the last traces of pretense. “But I most assuredly did not want to know that I ought not to play with fire unless I am well and truly prepared to get more than my fingers burnt. Stay away from me, Miss Burke. For your sake as much as mine.”

And with that Lieutenant Dance stepped back, shoved his arms into his uniform coat, jammed his hat securely on his head, and bowed. “Good morning, Miss Burke.”

*   *   *

Dance thought he was going to incinerate. His skin felt so hot beneath his wool coat that despite the chill November wind, he was like to catch the entire bloody ship on fire.

And it was all his own fault. Miss Buttoned-up Burke had been right—he had let his demons, in the form of Givens and Captain Muckross, goad him into behavior unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

But there was nothing he could do about it now. He had already done the only sensible thing when faced with the little scientist’s superior gunnery—he had spread his canvas into the wind, and fled topside, whence he could counsel himself that he had made an honest mistake.

One he would not make again.

She had seemed like such an easy target for his misplaced ire, appearing in the wardroom’s lamplight, so perfectly buttoned up and battened down, so tidy and neatly arranged in the middle of his untidy and unarrangeable world. And he wanted to teach her what she needed to learn—this ship couldn’t, and wouldn’t be arranged and made tidy just for her sake. If she wanted to live among them, it was
she
who was going to have to change. It was
she
who was going to have to arrange herself to suit, and not the other way round.

But he had showed her nothing of the kind—it was
she
who had showed him just how paltry his skills at managing a female really were. And that if he were going to have any control over his ship and his men, he was going to have to gain a far greater control over himself.

And the time to test himself had finally arrived. At eight bells of the morning watch, just as the late dawn was lighting the eastern sky, Dance made the order. “Mr. Ransome, pipe all hands to weigh anchor.”

Within a minute a shrill whistle rent the air, and the bosun and his mates were turning the men out. “All hands. All hands. Out and down, lads, out and down. All hands to weigh anchor.”

The order was not greeted with the energetic rush of feet that Dance had been accustomed to on his other ships, but a slow, fatalistic trudge as the men turned up reluctantly, grumbling and cursing his hide.

But Dance wasn’t about to miss the chance to leave Portsmouth harbor on an outgoing tide. Or before most of the fleet was awake. He had his pride. If
Tenacious
were ever to make it out of the Portsmouth roads with any competence, they needed the sweep of the outgoing tide to move them along.

If the men’s reluctance promised a bad start, it was only being made worse by the fact that the captain made no appearance on the quarterdeck.

“Mr. Lawrence,” he called quietly to the third lieutenant. “Pray convey the compliments of the deck to the captain, and inform him that we are making ready to sail.”

It had been one thing for the old man to hide away and leave all the work to his first lieutenant while they were in port, but Dance had never imagined the captain would stay away as his ship proceeded—or tried to proceed—to sea. Dance had a general idea of the vessel’s orders—the expedition was bound for the South Seas—but only the captain would have the formal sailing orders, or could set their course.

But what if Muckross were too drunk to set the course? What if he were too drunk to even make his way upon the quarterdeck? Surely the old man had enough sense to know what was required of him—he could retreat to his cabin in liquid solitude once he’d done his bloody duty, set the bloody course and given the goddamned order to proceed to sea.

In the meantime, Dance moved to the quarterdeck rail, away from the young woman who had made her clumsy way on deck the moment the pipes had sounded. He could not allow himself to look at her, or go to her aid when she barked her shin on the hatchway combing, or caromed backward off the sternmost larboard carronade in her attempt to move out of the sailors’ way. He could not allow his mind to stray in any way from the tasks at hand.

He kept the men at their work, putting them to the capstan to bring
Tenacious
over her anchor, and sending the topmen aloft to stand in readiness. Below the waist, Punch was at the capstan with his fiddle, and began to scratch out a steady tune, as
Tenacious
began the slow march up to her cable under the eye and cane of Mr. Ransome, who was not perhaps all work and no play, for the bosun started the men to singing a rousing rhythmic chantey to move the work along.

I thought I heard the old man say, leave her Johnny, leave her,

Tomorrow ye will get yer pay, and it’s time for us to leave her.

Leave her Johnny, leave her, Oh leave her, Johnny leave her.

For the voyage is long and the winds don’t blow,

And it’s time for us to leave her.

Oh the wind was foul and the sea was high, leave her Johnny, leave her,

She shipped it green and none went by, and it’s time for us to leave her.

The chorus of the song was caught up by the men at the forecastle and in the chains.
“Leave her Johnny, leave her, Oh leave her, Johnny leave her.”

Dance might have let the song continue—it was a common enough song for weighing anchor—if he had not caught the snide look first Ransome, and then others of the crew, sent back toward Miss Burke, who was doing her best to become invisible behind the sternmost carronade. But it was impossible. She was about as invisible as the winds whipping up her skirts and petticoat into a tangle of foam even as she clutched her cloak tight about her, as if it could shield her from their less-than-kind regard. Dance could feel her distress just as surely as he felt the wind.

More and more men joined in at the next verse, and Dance felt the mood turn ugly and snide.
“I hate to sail on this rotten tub. Leave her, Johnny, leave her.”

It was if the crew were openly voicing their feelings about Miss Burke’s presence aboard, and their displeasure at him in allowing her to stay. He was not imagining their emphasis, nor the shouting way they joined in the verse. A glance at Miss Burke told him she heard it as well and understood—her rosy face had paled the color of the caulk cliffs up Channel.

“No grog allowed and rotten grub, and it’s time for us to leave her.”

Dance had had enough. He leaned the force of his displeasure into his voice. “Punch.”

The spry old tar had taken a seat high on the hub of the capstan, but he looked up and took the hint from Dance’s dark lowered brows readily enough. “Oh, right enough so. Aye, sir, aye.” He saluted Dance with his bow, shifted his tune on the ancient old fiddle, and called out to the men. “Lads, here we go.”

We are outward bound for Rio town, with a heave ho, haul,